ave one
look and then blew out the match.

"Ugly as ever!" he said with a shudder. "So it wasn't the kiss of a
Mortal Maid, after all."

"Let me try," proposed the Rose Princess, in her sweet voice. "I am a
Mortal Maid who was once a Fairy. Perhaps my kiss will break the charm."

Files did not wholly approve of this, but he was too generous to
interfere. So the Rose Princess felt her way through the darkness to
Shaggy's brother and kissed him.

Ruggedo struck another match, while they all turned away.

"No," announced the former King; "that didn't break the charm, either.
It must be the kiss of a Fairy that is required--or else my memory has
failed me altogether."

"Polly," said Betsy, pleadingly, "won't you try?"

"Of course I will!" answered Polychrome, with a merry laugh. "I've
never kissed a mortal man in all the thousands of years I have existed,
but I'll do it to please our faithful Shaggy Man, whose unselfish
affection for his ugly brother deserves to be rewarded."

Even as Polychrome was speaking she tripped lightly to the side of the
Ugly One and quickly touched his cheek with her lips.

"Oh, thank you--thank you!" he fervently cried. "I've changed, this
time, I know. I can feel it! I'm different. Shaggy--dear Shaggy--I am
myself again!"

Files, who was near the opening, touched the spring that released the
big rock and it suddenly swung backward and let in a flood of daylight.

Everyone stood motionless, staring hard at Shaggy's brother, who, no
longer masked by the polka-dot handkerchief, met their gaze with a glad
smile.

"Well," said Shaggy Man, breaking the silence at last and drawing a
long, deep breath of satisfaction, "you are no longer the Ugly One, my
dear brother; but, to be entirely frank with you, the face that belongs
to you is no more handsome than it ought to be."

"I think he's rather good looking," remarked Betsy, gazing at the man
critically.

"In comparison with what he was," said King Kaliko, "he is really
beautiful. You, who never beheld his ugliness, may not understand that;
but it was my misfortune to look at the Ugly One many times, and I say
again that, in comparison with what he was, the man is now beautiful."

"All right," returned Betsy, briskly, "we'll take your word for it,
Kaliko. And now let us get out of this tunnel and into the world again."

Chapter Twenty-Three

Ruggedo Reforms

It did not take them long to regain the royal cavern of the Nome K